Originally Posted by Xlrate

What they need to do is very simple. Reduce down to 13 classes. 3 tank types 3 healer types and 7 dps/buffing types.

Balance could be achieved very easily for tanks by fixing the avoidance/mit issue and doing the way tanks hold agro better. Make your 3 tanks be limited to plate/tower, chain/kite, and leather/no shield equippable (but gets an avoidance bonus and can DW) then fix hate generation, have some reactive hate, some taunting, some nuking some combat arts et. al.

For healers you could balance things very easy. Druid, Cleric, (I forget what the warding ones are called). Lets start it off, Clerics get the most armor choices and round shields, best and fastest single target healing, slowest and most expensive group heals, and best buffs for tanks and self, their spell dps is basically crap but they get a bonus to melee dps and are limited to crushing weapons. They keep reactives as their specialty heal of choice and recieve a damage shield. Clerics buff Str, STa and WIS.

Druids, Least armor choices of all the healers leather and cloth only, Stay with H.O.T.s, Group healing is their specailty fast and high, Single target healing is their weakness. They buff casters the best but also recieve a melee proc to grant out, the stats they buff are int and AGI and maybe limited spell haste. Druids have the strongest nukes out of the healers and AE's. Their melee dps is ornamental at best. Druids do have a very limited root / slow.

OK lets fix those that ward. Limited to chain armor and bucklers, recieves an extra line of ward spells (so they will have 3 specialty lines of healing as opposed to other healers 2) They are solid at warding but lose some power on direct heals. Their buffs lean towards agi, haste, and raw HP. They have very few buffs. They have best debuffs out of all the healers. They have short time proc buffs they can cast on enemies so when any group member lands melee, there is bonus damage given.

You all can figure out how to balance dps classes, although i would highly advise
Warlocks +necro
Wizard + conj
Illusionis + Coercer
Swashy + Assassin + Brig
Ranger
Dirge + Troub
Beastmaster

Originally Posted by Scafloc

What fucking variety? What the fuck is the difference between a fury and a warden, or a troub and a dirge, or a bruiser and a monk, etc? They're basically the same apart from slightly different buffs or damage types. WoW actually has a lot more variety between classes than this game. The WoW druid has more variety in a single class than the whole priest archetype in EQ2. In essence, every fighter plays the same, every scout plays the same, every priest plays the same. "One buffs haste, one buffs dps" is not variety, it's just lame and pointless.

Originally Posted by Scafloc

My mistake, you stand at a distance and spam CAs instead of stand behind a mob and spam CAs.

Originally Posted by Pacc

You were lumped together because you are the same. If you feel there is variety in Eq2 right now as far as classes are concerned than you dont have enough knowledge about all the classes.

What was said above is totally true. Some people buff dps others haste or 1 class is for ae and 1 is for single target. Listen to me when I say this, there is no balance and there is no variety and the little variety there is only makes it so that certain classes suck. For example, lots of the top guilds right now have 2 assas. or 2 necros, 2 wizards, 2-3 brigs, the list goes on and on. Then they exclude palys, sks, warlocks, monks, brusiers, and that list goes on and on.

SoE screwed themselves from the start by making 24 classes and that issue I doubt will be fixed.

Originally Posted by LFG

Because it is not possible for this game to support 24 classes. There simply aren't enough features and capabilities to go around. What happens is that some classes are king of the hill, and people want 2 at each raid, and other classes only justify a raid slot in min/maxing guilds if there is absolutely no other choice to fill the slot.

Think about it like this: You go on a dinner date, and order a meal that includes a slab of beef, potatoes, vegetables, cabernet, and desert.

The waiter brings you a plate with the beef and vegetables. Your date gets a plate with the potatoes, wine, and desert. You are told you can't share.

That is the situation with at least druids, clerics, warriors, bards, shaman, and enchanters in EQ2 at this time. Each of those classes are only getting half a meal, and none is satisfied with what the waiter has delivered.

It was a poorly thought out scheme to seperate these classes to begin with. They did this for marketing reasons, just like the did with SWG, to maximize subscribers by pitching all the diversity and choices they haven't been able to support and deliver. At the top end of the game, this shit plain isn't working.

My daddy always said that if you have to eat a frog, it's best not to look at it too long first. This frog don't jump.

This problem should be handled sooner rather than later, because it is responsible for the sluggish growth of this game compared to WoW. Many EQ2 classes should simply be combined now to overcome for the poor planning and greed that caused these problems to begin with.

Originally Posted by MysidiaDrakkenbane

I'm quoting this because this is exactly how I feel. I didn't like the way they bastardized the Druid class in EQ2. There was no real reason for it. They should have never split the classes at all. I understand their want/need to make a different game than EQ1, but they could have gone a different route with that. You know, like actually making the class do what it CAN/SUPPOSED do.

But, you'll have to excuse me. I'm an old D&D chick that is pretty much stuck in her ways as being a Druid.